Social media reactions to Aaron Sorkin's Facebook whistleblower drama range from raves that call it more urgent than The Social Network to shrugs calling it a lesser retread.
The embargo lifted Monday on social media reactions to Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning, and the verdict is messy in the best way. Full reviews land October 7, two days before the film opens in theatres on October 9, and what's out there already suggests this is not going to be a consensus pick.
The film is a companion piece rather than a direct sequel to David Fincher's The Social Network, the 2010 drama Sorkin wrote but did not direct. This time he's in the chair himself, telling the story of the 2021 Facebook leak, when engineer-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen handed tens of thousands of internal documents to the Wall Street Journal and the SEC. Mikey Madison plays Haugen. Jeremy Allen White plays WSJ reporter Jeff Horwitz, the journalist she worked with to break the story.
Jeremy Strong steps into the Zuckerberg role after Jesse Eisenberg, who originated the part in 2010, turned down the chance to reprise it. Wunmi Mosaku and Bill Burr round out Zuckerberg's legal team on screen, with Betty Gilpin and Billy Magnussen also in the cast. Jeff Cronenweth, who shot the original film for Fincher, is back behind the camera, and Alexandre Desplat composed an entirely original score rather than leaning on anything from the 2010 soundtrack.
The reactions, compiled by The Hollywood Reporter and TheWrap, pull in opposite directions on almost every point. One critic called it a decent journalism drama that lives in the shadow of a much superior predecessor, with nothing standing out beyond the lead performances. Next Best Picture's Matt Neglia went further, writing that the material feels like it's arriving five years too late and calling it well-intentioned but unlikely to land.
Others pushed back hard. Critic Manuel São Bento said the film sits on the same pedestal as The Social Network for him, adding the hot take that this one matters more because it turns the Facebook Files into something genuinely infuriating. Film critic Edward Douglas told X he liked it specifically because Sorkin understands that a movie lives or dies on script and cast, even if it's not quite The Social Network.
There's broad agreement on a few things regardless of where critics landed. Strong is getting singled out for his Zuckerberg, even with reportedly limited screen time. Madison and White are drawing consistent praise, with one reviewer noting Madison is more than just her Anora performance. And more than one critic flagged that the direction feels flatter than Fincher's, more 2000s prestige TV than big-screen thriller, though not everyone meant that as a knock.
Sorkin's film arrives amid a wider run of Silicon Valley scrutiny on screen, following Alex Gibney's Elon Musk documentary Musk and arriving the same week as reactions surfaced for Luca Guadagnino's Sam Altman biopic Artificial. Nathan Fielder's Elizabeth Holmes docudrama You Can See Everything is also on the way.
Whether the social media split holds once the formal reviews drop Wednesday is the thing to watch. Either way, audiences get to judge for themselves starting Friday.
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